Notes: No real spoilers.
Suggestions for improvement (as well as a better title) welcomed.

The Reaper Wears Pinkby Dusk
Nightshade

----

Pain was the first thing Ryouga
became aware of, a deep throbbing pain centred in his chest. He
coughed weakly, felt blood dribble from his mouth.

What... what happened? The
question drifted up from the depths of his pain-hazed mind. A small
frown followed by a wince marred his face as he tried to remember
what he'd gotten himself into this time.

Red bubbled up from his memory.
Yes, a long-haired redhead... wearing pink. She... she was fighting?
Something big and rocky, very ugly. Violent too. I went to help...
Her whip wasn't working very well on that... thing. I... blew up
its hip with my Breaking Point Technique... it was faster than it
looked. Must've got me before that blue light smashed it to bits.

"Bingo!" chirped a cheerful voice
from somewhere above and to his right.

Ryouga managed to crack open an eye,
and was rewarded for his efforts with a large pink blob topped by a
light blue one surrounded by more blurry colours. Slowly the pink
blob solidified into a girl wearing a kimono, and the light blue blob
turned into her hair, held up in a ponytail. The other
colours--presumably his surroundings--refused to focus into anything
recognizable.

"You're not quite dead yet," the
girl continued, who appeared to be floating, "And if you're
lucky, you won't, either."

"Yup!" Botan pulled a small black
book out of her sleeve and flipped through the pages. "Hmm. You
aren't really supposed to die today though, but sometimes accidents
happen!" Botan closed her book and beamed. "Can't be helped,
really. Little hazards like that are part of the whole 'free-will'
package."

Ryouga became aware of other voices;
they sounded so far away, though the seemed to originate from the
moving blobs--a large light blue one, two pink ones, one large and
topped with red, and a greenish one. He wasn't quite sure but it
looked as if the light blue blob touched him. He began to feel very
cold, but somehow he could breathe easier.

"Aah, that's looking much better!"

Ryouga looked back at the... Grim
Reaper, who was leaning closer to him, peering at his chest.

"Yukina's doing a great job," she
said. "You'll be back on your feet in no time."

That said, Botan put away her book
and--Ryouga blinked, he definitely had to be hallucinating now, if he
hadn't been hallucinating the whole thing--sat on what looked like
an oar that appeared from nowhere. Ryouga wasn't sure, but she may
have winked at him; she was getting all fuzzy again. As if in
compensation, the rest of his surroundings became less blurry. Ryouga
winced; the guy wearing green also got much louder.

"Hope I won't see you for a long
time, Hibiki Ryouga!"

He watched the fuzzy pink blob fly
away--on an oar, of all things--until she disappeared.

A last throught drifted through his
mind before he fell blissfully asleep: The reaper wears pink?

-----

End

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